


drain all the blood (and give the kids a show)

by KilltheDJ



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Guilt, Horror, Mirrors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29550225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheDJ/pseuds/KilltheDJ
Summary: “You’ll find out,” Ghoul whispers, because it’s true, because he doesn’t want to disturb what’s got its claws sunk into Poison. “You’ll find out, you’ll find out before morning.”“What happened? You look like shit,” says Poison, furrowing his brows in a distinctly Poison manner, no redness to their eyes, no smoke, no smile.Or, there's a reason Fun Ghoul doesn't like mirrors.
Relationships: Fun Ghoul (Danger Days) & The Girl (Fabulous Killjoys)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 27





	drain all the blood (and give the kids a show)

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for this one... there's a lot so i'd say just. be careful while reading, okay? cws for: possession, a FUCKTON of mirrors, strangulation, graphic depictions of violence, death, the cold, blood. funpoison's there if you squint but "love" is meant as platonic and all the things that go along with that. poison is he/they by the way, if u see their pronouns shift a little here and there.

It’s been worse, lately. The patrols. 

Usually, they’d never be stupid enough to go out Drac-hunting with the Girl. She’s seven and she’s seen blood - had her fair share of it, since the break-in at the Diner. But she doesn’t  _ need  _ more on her shoulders. 

They haven’t had a choice, though. 

The Diner is in a hot-spot, the Trans Am can comfortably fit her, Ghoul, and Poison; Kobra and Jet ride their bikes, and they  _ drive.  _

Gas isn’t cheap and the trip hasn’t been all too fun for anyone other  _ than  _ the Girl, who’s just happy to get some toys bummed off sympathetic merchants and to see some Dracs get gunned down. 

It’s sundown and they’re all  _ tired  _ and the Trans Am’s tank is reading  _ empty,  _ even though she’s gonna drive for about four more miles before calling it quits. The Girl’s napping in Ghoul’s lap in the backseat and Ghoul would follow suit, except he’s been napping on-and-off all day ‘cos he’s got nightshift, again. 

They’re in Zone Six. 

The rule of thumb for Z-6 is  _ lights out after dark.  _ No headlights, no driving, no trading, nothing other than a  _ flashlight,  _ and even that’s getting gutsy depending on where you are. 

While patrols don’t litter the sands of Z-6, some old outposts are still active; the cameras are old enough that they don’t pick up anything until it’s dark out and a figure stands out, and that’s when the sleeper agents are activated. 

So, it’s sundown, the Trans Am is running on empty, Ghoul’s wide awake, there’s a sleeping seven-year-old on his arm, and the only place around is a strip mall. Abandoned, of course, but he can see it on the horizon - a strip mall he’s been to once or twice, on his way to the Amusement Park. 

It’s run-down and littered with weeds and lizards and whatever critter’s made a home there, and the roofs of every single building are caved in except  _ one.  _

A chill goes down his spine. 

“We’re not stayin’ there,” Ghoul mumbles, carding his fingers through the Girl’s curly, tangled hair, twirling his thumb and index finger around some of the curls to keep from digging his nails into his palm so hard it  _ bleeds.  _ “Can’t stay there.” 

“Where?” Poison asks, in that hushed,  _ there’s a child sleeping  _ sort-of tone they never use anywhere else. Which is odd, considering they wake the Girl up more than anyone else. They  _ genuinely  _ haven’t noticed the strip mall, and then - 

“Oh. Huh, didn’t realize that was there. Nah, it’s sundown, and my blaster’s half-charged and running on technic nylon right now.” 

“That’ll blow your face off before you get two good shots out of it.” 

“Yeah, you see why I ain’t exactly thrilled to be out past sunrise? We’re staying there!” 

For a person who hasn’t even  _ seen  _ the place, Poison sure is dead set on that, but Ghoul can’t say he blames them. It has that aura about it, till you’ve been there once or twice. The feeling of safety until it crushes your ribs into a paste and smears it across what’s left of your still-beating heart. 

“Only one building’s got a ceiling,” Ghoul tells them, but he knows it’s a losing battle. 

They’re within a mile of the strip mall now. The shop no doubt has its claws sunk into Poison already, bleeding them dry, waiting to figure out what makes them  _ tick.  _

Ghoul hadn’t been a devout believer in anything until he was nineteen and saw the stars burst from his chest after an explosion knocked him to his core. 

He hadn’t believed in anything other than the Phoenix Witch and the starlight above him until he was twenty-one and a scream pierced through his ears, rattling him awake to find a patrol squad thirty seconds out. No one had screamed that night. No one had died  _ because  _ of the scream he heard. 

And he hadn’t believed in anything  _ malicious  _ until he’d heard about  _ the Mirror Shop.  _

“Only building we’re gonna stay in, then,” Poison answers, and that’s that, and Ghoul pretends his movements aren’t jerky and uncoordinated as the Trans Am finds its way into the old parking lot, the tires screeching as they switched from sandy, cracked roads, to just cracked pavement. 

Kobra and Jet both diligently stop behind the Trans Am, and Poison’s the first to get out. Silence stretches through the air, and Jet  _ knows,  _ Jet  _ knows  _ and they can’t - they can’t let Poison  _ do this.  _

“Get out, Ghoul.” 

Ghoul doesn’t know when the question is said. It sounds like Kobra, but Kobra is standing around and talking to Poison when Ghoul glances out the window. The Girl is still asleep in his arms, and she’s passed out  _ cold.  _

“Get out, Fun Ghoul.” 

It’s Jet’s voice this time. Jet’s tuning up their bike, as Ghoul can see from the rearview mirror. The windows are closed, the doors shut. 

There’s nothing around other than  _ whatever’s  _ using his crew member's voices. 

“Leave her alone,” it says, sickly sweet in Poison’s voice, this time, and Ghoul  _ swears  _ he catches a glimpse of something in the rearview mirror; something with reddened eyes and teeth sharp enough to pierce steel without breaking. 

They drip golden. 

The figure in the mirror disappears. Ghoul’s grip tightens in the Girl’s hair so hard that she groans, waking from her slumber, and he’d curse himself if his heart wasn’t beating so fast that it might just beat out of his ribcage. 

The  _ thing  _ might just like that, so Ghoul carefully, hesitantly untangles his fingers from the Girl’s hair. 

She’s awake. She isn’t saying anything, though — she’s more than used to waking up in strange places, and they’d long since taught her not to utter a  _ sound  _ until one of them gave her the okay that it’s safe. 

_ That  _ happened after a particular incident that involved a jilted ex-lover and a rocket launcher. Tommy Chow Mein hadn’t been too happy with them after that one, but the ban for them in Paradise Motel was lifted a couple of months back after Chow Mein admitted they paid well. 

Of course, they pay well. They’re the  _ Fabulous Killjoys,  _ for fuck’s sake. 

And Fun Ghoul is a  _ Fabulous Killjoy,  _ for fuck’s sake, so he pushes down the lingering fear, and shakes the Girl’s shoulder. “Sorry ‘bout that, Girlie. It’s sundown. We gotta stay somewhere.” 

“Why not in tha’ Trans Am?” 

Why not in the Trans Am, indeed. It might be uncomfortable to cram them all into the tiny car, but Ghoul’s fine with sleeping in the trunk, and the Girl sleeps in the passenger side seat, and Jet and Kobra sleep on the floor of the backseat and the backseat, respectively. 

It’d be smarter. 

It’d be smarter, but the Mirror Shop already has its claws in Poison, and Ghoul isn’t going to leave him alone, so he’s already pulling the backdoor open and giving her a regretful smile. “S’cold and we don’t wanna run the heater.” 

“Isn’t it still gonna be warmer than, like, some random buildin’?”

Curse the seven-year-old for having decent logic. She’s  _ seven,  _ she shouldn’t  _ have  _ logic in the first place. (She only does sometimes, like when she reloads a battery pack in under five seconds, but not when she thinks combining toothpaste and ketch-up will create a breath mint.) 

“I dunno, Girlie,” he says earnestly, and that’s that, though he’s got his fist twisted into the back of her jacket like he’s scared of losing her, despite being around the others, not a threat in sight save for that  _ damn  _ shop. 

She shrugs, and promptly forgets about it; skips away from his grasp with her dirty, ill-fitting overalls pooling around her ankles as she excitedly skips up to Kobra, telling him something or other about the dream she had on the drive over. 

Jet’s shooting him a look from their bike. It screams  _ this is a bad idea,  _ and Ghoul agrees, agrees so badly it  _ aches,  _ but Poison’s going into that shop whether they want them to or  _ not.  _ So, Poison isn’t going to go  _ alone.  _

No one ever comes out of the Mirror Shop the same after going in alone, or so they say. Ghoul hasn’t met any of its supposed lonesome victims, but he went in with an old crew, once. 

Once. The thing that freaks him out the most, of course, is the fact that  _ he can’t remember it,  _ but he remembers the way Mads screamed the nights after; he remembers going into the train cart he’d then called home and finding sprawling notes and drawings and lyrics spanning the walls, from charcoal to blood that had run from Mads nails once they’d run out of pencil. 

Mads didn’t talk about it. Mad Gear and the Missile Kid was born two weeks after that (and after the Bombing of Zone 4, but  _ Ghoul _ doesn’t talk about that.) 

“We have to,” Ghoul says weakly, because the Witch knows - does she? Whatever’s around the Mirror Shop is distorted enough to block her, certainly - that Poison isn’t listening, Kobra isn’t saying anything, and Jet  _ knows.  _

“Are you sure?” Jet asks, because Ghoul knows what they’re thinking -  _ maybe.  _ Maybe if they get far enough away. Maybe if they tie Poison up and don’t let them see any mirrors for the rest of their life, it’ll be okay. They won’t enter the shop. 

But that would simply end in frayed ropes and bleeding skin and  _ mirrors.  _

“Yeah,” Ghoul nods, throat dry, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. “Not leavin’ him alone. Girlie, either.” 

_ It wants her,  _ he doesn’t say, but maybe Jet understands - they  _ can’t  _ leave the Girl in a place like that, not with Poison fucked-over by the shop, not with the way it  _ spoke  _ to Ghoul in the car.  _ It wants her,  _ and that’s scarier than anything else it can do. 

_ 

The Mirror Shop isn’t imposing, not at first. Not unless you  _ know.  _

In fact, it’s  _ inviting. _

The rest of the caved-in strip mall stores are obviously not  _ all  _ there - crumbling, groaning underneath their own weight, windows smashed in with ceilings to match and walls torn to shreds by what time’s given them. The Mirror Shop, on the other hand, sat untouched, blue-ish gray concrete greeting them with framed windows and an innocuous door. 

They’re all gathered around, now; Ghoul and Jet are both nervous, nervous and  _ knowing  _ and unable to stop anything; Poison’s still being called, their fingers wrapped around the handle of the door but not quite opening it, and Kobra hasn’t quite been all there since his last run-in with a Crow. 

Poison opens the door. 

It creaks open, but nothing happens; in fact, the only thing that  _ does  _ happen is good. A dull, blue light emanates from an ages-old motion sensor by the door, illuminating the tens of hundreds of mirrors lining every possible section of the shop. 

Cheap hand-held mirrors, framed mirrors, vanity mirrors, metal-backed mirrors, ornate mirrors, make-up mirrors, circle mirrors, full-body mirrors; any kind of mirror in any kind of style, from the walls to the ceiling to the parts of the floor not designated as walkways. 

Ghoul’s eyes catch on a metal-backed mirror without an ornate frame. It’s not his reflection staring back at him. 

The Girl catches his hand and  _ squeezes  _ before he can do anything other than looking away with his heart hammering enough to  _ hurt.  _

In, out. In, out. Easy. 

The sun’s still on the horizon. They have time.  _ They have time,  _ he tells himself, but he knows, from the way Poison reaches out to touch the metal-backed mirror, that sundown simply means the mirror shop has nothing to hide anymore. 

Jet rushes forward, slamming into Ghoul’s shoulder, smacking Poison’s hand away with frantic, pleading eyes, and  _ no one says a word.  _

There’s nothing to say. The Mirror Shop is having its fun and they can’t stop that, just prolong the inevitable, and Poison is simply  _ staring  _ at the mirrors as they walk, slowly, down the aisles. 

“It’s warm in here,” the Girl says, a way to state the obvious in the way only a seven-year-old with no idea of what she’s doing here can. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know and, besides, maybe it won’t affect her. 

Ghoul likes to think he can keep her safe like that, resisting the urge to scoop her up into his arms and  _ run.  _

“It is,” Poison murmurs, running their fingers lightly across the frames, but not touching the actual  _ mirrors;  _ their nails  _ scrape.  _ Laughter echoes from within it. 

The fun hasn’t begun  _ yet.  _

“We should get our things ready if we’re sleeping in here,” Kobra says, monotone, a  _ pinch  _ to his voice and something wrong in the straightness of his spine. He’s hiding something, sure, but even he must know there’s something  _ wrong.  _

Ghoul smiles, nods, and tells Poison to go get the sleeping bags. 

For a second, all that’s there is  _ smoke,  _ and a red halo around where Poison’s hair was, but Ghoul blinks and - and it’s just Poison, stock still, not getting the sleeping bags. 

Jet does that. 

_ 

The first hour goes smoothly. 

They’re all moving, bustling around, getting things ready to go to sleep and assigning roles - Kobra’s sleeping next to the Girl (mostly because he looks like he could use some quality snuggles), Ghoul’s on watch, Jet’s on  _ Poison  _ Watch, and Poison’s going to sleep. 

It’s chaotic. It’s not going to allow for much sleep. It’s going to be hell in the morning for Jet and Ghoul. It’s going to be worth it, because they know, and the sun’s down, and oh, things lurk in the shadows. 

Jet and Ghoul don’t talk. Talking means  _ communication  _ means  _ vulnerability  _ and the last thing Ghoul needs is clawings slitting down his throat, razorblade smiles finishing his Cheshire grin. 

Ghoul’s sitting criss-cross, holding his blaster tight, like a man-made creation can stop whatever lurks in the mirrors, spine ramrod straight glancing out the windows, his breathing too loud,  _ suffocatingly  _ loud. 

“Calm down,” something says - Poison, Poison says, but Ghoul’s got his head twisted all the way to the right with his heart in his throat and his finger about to  _ squeeze  _ on the trigger when he sees the killjoy looking at him with bed-head and squinty eyes. “Nothin’s gonna happen.” 

“You’ll find out,” Ghoul whispers, because it’s  _ true,  _ because he doesn’t want to disturb what’s got its claws sunk into Poison. “You’ll find out, you’ll find out before morning.” 

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Poison repeats, and it sounds so  _ earnest  _ and genuine coming from them that Ghoul can’t help the glimmer of hope that threatens to crumble his resolve. 

Maybe it’s just rumored. Maybe he’s just seeing things. Maybe Mads just had that coffee hallucination as they said. Maybe, maybe. But it’s  _ hope  _ and Ghoul’s so on edge that he doesn’t quite relax, but he swallows back some of his fear, his paranoia. 

When Poison gestures for Ghoul to come sit with him, by the sleeping bag, Ghoul’s near-silent as he scrambles over.

Maybe Poison isn’t enchanted by the Mirror Shop. Maybe Ghoul’s overreacting. 

Poison’s arms are gentle and firm around Ghoul’s shoulders, a half-assed hug if anything - since Ghoul doesn’t return it - and they mumble into Ghoul’s jacket, inviting, warm. “Nothing’s going to happen.” 

When Poison pulls away, they’re still smiling, still got that bed-head, and their arms are sliding  _ up  _ Ghoul’s shoulders, and their smile is turning twisted and their eyes  _ red  _ and then  _ Ghoul can’t breathe because there are hands wrapped around his throat.  _

His  _ own  _ hands are scrambling to his neck and frantically pulling at Poison’s wrists, at the gloves Poison never takes off and the chipped red polish, trying to get them to  _ release,  _ but Poison’s strength isn’t human and they aren’t budging, smile too too  _ too  _ wide to be human anymore.

“I told you to get out, Ghoul,” Poison says, sickly sweet, eyes glowing, a flash of smoke pouring from their mouth, nails digging into the sides of Ghoul’s neck, palms pressed to the center, squeezing - 

Black spots are dancing in his vision. His ray gun is thrown across the walkway and he can’t move his legs and he doesn’t know why and his lips are numb and he can’t say anything when he manages to pry them open and it’s like his fingers are glued to Poison’s, not pushing, not pulling. 

But  _ helping.  _

No, no, no no  _ no!  _ Ghoul can’t - he can’t - he can’t pass out but his lungs are  _ screaming  _ and he’s trying to take in air that he  _ can’t  _ and his lungs don’t  _ feel  _ right, stomach contracting, and he manages to shout, somehow, voice raspy and disorientated and -

“Jet!”

Poison releases him and blinks.

Ghoul’s got his own hands around his throat, now, massaging the new bruises and crescent-moon indents as he takes greedy, greedy gulps of air, hearing nothing more than his own fucking fear. 

Jet blinks at him, too. “What’s up?” they ask, like Ghoul wasn’t being strangled only seconds ago by something pretending to be Poison, something that  _ isn’t them -  _

“What happened? You look like shit,” says Poison, furrowing his brows in a distinctly  _ Poison  _ manner, no redness to their eyes, no smoke, no smile. 

“I - you - nevermind,” Ghoul stammers out, wide-eyed, and it takes a moment for him to realize,  _ oh, that’s why I’m afraid, _ and it takes him half that time to scramble away from Poison, all the way to Kobra and the Girl, who's snuggled up together with Kobra’s arms wrapped protectively around her, and sound asleep. 

“Ghoul?” Jet asks quietly, once Poison’s laid down with a shrug, and Ghoul’s staring out the window with a renewed determination. 

He hasn’t gone to pick up his blaster. He’ll have to pass twenty mirrors for that. He’s counted. He hasn’t looked in one, yet, but his reflection keeps trying to reach out to him, the tinny sound of a mirrored fist hitting the surface that he  _ won’t look at.  _

_ “Remember me!” _ it shouts, loud enough to  _ crack the  _ glass, but no one else seems bothered. So Ghoul won’t be, either, setting his jaw. 

“I’m fine.” He’s not fine. He’s shaking out of his skin and the tinny sound makes him wince. 

_ “Remember me!”  _

Ghoul ignores it. He doesn’t look at Jet, or the mirror, or Kobra and the Girl, or  _ Poison;  _ his throat aches. That’s all he’s going to focus on. 

“You can’t ignore me forever,” Jet muses, and when Ghoul turns, startled out of his own resolve, he can’t say he’s surprised to find it  _ isn’t  _ Jet - it’s Jet’s  _ body  _ with wild, red eyes and a feral grin. “You’re smoke and mirrors, child of the gun. You  _ belong  _ here. We’ll have you one way or another.” 

“You don’t want me,” Ghoul tells Jet - no, no, tells  _ it,  _ his body frozen for the second time in the night, unable to do anything, unable to  _ escape.  _ This  _ thing,  _ it’s, it’s taken Jet’s body, and Ghoul can’t even  _ help.  _ “You can’t have her.” 

“We’ll have her,” it says, echoing across every goddamn mirror in the place, where it echoes, it  _ echoes,  _ it hurts, it hurts as the echoes don’t  _ stop,  _ as the pitch heightens, as Ghoul screams loud enough to drown it out, drown it  _ out,  _ suddenly holding his head in his arms, salty tears running down his face. 

Jet asks him what happened. 

Ghoul lies, and it’s too familiar on his tongue. 

_ 

Nothing happens for two more hours. 

Now, Ghoul isn’t the type to let his guard down in the first place, but after what happened with Poison and Jet, Ghoul holds a knife to Kobra’s throat when he wakes up in the middle of the night to take the second shift. 

Kobra gives him a raised brow, takes off his sunglasses - to reveal familiar, purple-and-brown eyes - and says, “they’re mirrors, Ghoul. You’ve dealt with worse. Get some sleep.” 

“Don’t think I can sleep if I try,” Ghoul answers, quick and sly and feeling none of the wit that would usually come so easily to him. He  _ is  _ tired, despite having napped all day like his energy is sapped the longer he stays in the Mirror Shop. 

It might; there’s little he isn’t willing to believe anymore. 

Kobra hums, acknowledgment more than anything because it doesn’t  _ matter  _ if Ghoul can’t sleep. He’ll still switch with Kobra and that means he’s got to  _ try,  _ hands shaking as he crouches down and folds back the sleeping bag. 

The Girl’s still sound asleep. She’s been going through a bit of a growth spurt, lately - been eating most of their actual food and sleeping more often than not, and  _ grouchy  _ when she  _ is  _ awake, so Ghoul doesn’t want to wake her. 

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t need to know that the Mirror Shop is all smoke and mirrors, something less than  _ human  _ trying to get to her. 

No. Ghoul lays down, burrowing himself in the sleeping bag, and tentatively wraps his arms around her, just shy of  _ squeezing,  _ trying to remember how to breathe with the rise and fall of his chest and she’s  _ safe.  _

He wants  _ out  _ of this place, this  _ place,  _ but twenty minutes feels like two hours and two hours feel like twenty minutes. Who is he to disrupt the unnatural? 

He closes his eyes, eventually, when he can hear the tell-tale sound of Kobra fidgeting with the playing cards he keeps in his pockets, and it’s  _ fine,  _ he’s fine, he’s completely fine, he just needs to fall asleep and morning will come and he can  _ leave.  _

Something bruises against his side. 

Ghoul grimaces, squirming as though going to bat it away, but simply tightens his grip on the Girl, shifting her closer. 

It brushes against his side, again, and Ghoul realizes, belated, that he’s in a  _ sleeping bag.  _

Nothing can touch him, because he’s in a  _ sleeping  _ back and there isn’t even time to scream before there’s something covering his  _ mouth  _ and he’s staring back at his reflection, his own reflection with the finished Cheshire grin, skin torn and melting and  _ wrong wrong wrong.  _

“Shh,” it says, a chill running down Ghoul’s spine, the sleeping bag contorting to fit him and nothing else, a prison, a coffin, wide eyes trying to struggle as his own demented reflection smiles out at him, halfway out of the mirror, flesh melting like it bad make-up in the sun. 

And it puts its  _ arms  _ around the Girl, holding her sleeping form,  _ cooing  _ down at her and rocking her, like - like - 

“No!” Ghoul screams out, shouts, maybe, but his voice is silent even to his own ears and his throat  _ hurts,  _ not from being strangled but from something  _ not quite right  _ in there anymore, anymore,  _ it has her, it can’t take her, it can’t -  _

“I’ll see you soon,” it beams, and steps back into the mirror. 

Ghoul stops breathing, even as the sleeping bag pools around him, just a chunk of fucking fabric but the Girl isn’t next to him and he  _ failed.  _

The failure, hot and heavy in his gut, shame and fear and reeking of  _ not good enough not good enough,  _ doesn’t leave, even as he clambers to his feet and stares at the mirror, his fingertips running along the surface, trying to push through. 

Is it wrong that he wants to smash the mirror? 

(What if that means the Girl will be trapped there forever?) 

Is it wrong that he wants to cuss Kobra out because Kobra’s on watch but Kobra isn’t  _ doing  _ anything and - and - and where are the others? 

“Kobra?” Ghoul asks, shaky, more than he should be.

He’s still in his sleeping bag, sitting upright with wild, frantic eyes, and there’s no one around. There’s no one around. 

Not Jet, not the Girl, not Poison, not  _ Kobra.  _ Nothing. 

And… And Ghoul can only see the backs of the mirrors, the outside looking in, but that would mean -  _ oh, Witch.  _ The Girl… the Girl wasn’t taken into the mirror, was she? 

But… but Ghoul’s  _ in  _ the mirror now. 

He scrambles out of the sleeping bag like it’d burn him, holding one of the mirrors, glancing at the same scene he’d just been in - the Girl, asleep in his arms, Kobra on watch, Jet still toying with Poison’s hair in a lackluster effort to stay awake. 

But that isn’t  _ him.  _ That’s not him, but rather the  _ thing,  _ and Ghoul  _ screams,  _ screams until his lungs hurt and his ribs are too tight and his heart is slowly making its way to his mouth but the scene doesn’t change. 

The  _ thing,  _ it has his crew, and all he can do is  _ watch.  _

_ 

Ghoul doesn’t know how long he spends in front of the mirror’s back, clawing at it, trying and waiting for someone to notice his presence, waiting for someone to realize that the  _ him  _ lying next to the Girl is nothing more than a petty imitation, petting her hair - Ghoul can’t feel anything other than dread _.  _

That’s not  _ him.  _ That’s not him and its - it's got his  _ crew  _ in the palm of its hands, and there’s nothing he can  _ do  _ other than scream, but his throat is raw and dry, and he doesn’t have any more tears to shed. 

He  _ knew  _ they shouldn’t have gone into the stupid fucking shop. He should’ve listened to Jet. They should’ve fucking - fucking stuffed Poison into the trunk of the ‘Am, filled it with gas and left as soon as they saw the strip mall in view. 

Can’t be that lucky, he supposes, his nails a bright, bloated purple when he pulls them back from the mirror’s back, like just  _ trying  _ to look into the mirror’s sucking the life out of him. 

He watches in fascination when a chill spreads down from his nails to his palms, to his wrists, the bloated purple following. Freezing, he’s - he’s  _ freezing,  _ tremors racking through his body as he balls up on the floor to keep the heat in. 

The next mistake Ghoul makes, he thinks, is that he closes his eyes. 

It’s just - it’s so fucking  _ cold  _ that his clothing is more of a hindrance than anything, his skin might as well belong to a  _ corpse,  _ grayed and purpled and not  _ him,  _ not in the slightest, and he’s shaking so violently as he tries to hold his legs colder. 

He wants it to  _ stop.  _

His tears freeze on his lashes. 

When the chill starts creeping up his spine, the corpse-like discoloration and lack of heat sapping into more and more of his body heat, Ghoul shudders, takes a breath and realizes that he’s not getting out of this by being stubborn. 

He might not get out of this at all, but that’s okay - it doesn’t  _ matter  _ what he does so long as he can make sure that  _ thing  _ doesn’t leave the Shop, either, so long as the others are okay. So long as the  _ Girl  _ is okay. 

And, clearly, the Shop doesn’t want him to be on the outside looking in right now. 

So, he closes his eyes with those frozen tears and lets the cold rush through his heart. 

_ 

He finds himself staring at his own reflection. 

The back of the mirror is a fun little place, he thinks, because it only extends to the things the mirrors can see; the reality only spreads as far as to right outside the Mirror Shop, strips of land here and there, where the mirrors are. 

Ghoul doesn’t want to know what happens if he steps onto the blackened void that encases everything else. 

But either way, he’s sitting in front of the mirror he supposedly came through, criss-cross, staring at his double, at the  _ thing  _ that’s taken him. 

It’s a measured glance, staring with curiosity more than anything. The fear left with the cold; now there’s just a sort-of resolve in its place that’s blocking it, a wall that’s going to crumble if he lets himself think about it too long. 

“Why do you want her?” Ghoul asks the completely normal reflection; it’s following his movements and glancing where he glances, but it's got bright red eyes. 

The melting flesh factor of the double’s appearance doesn’t come until it opens its mouth, the entire jaw unhinging and kept together by the threads of skin that hang down like claws. “Why do you assume we  _ want  _ anything?” 

_ We.  _ Ghoul’s starting to hate that word. 

“She’s got no value to you in a place like this,” Ghoul says, clipped and curt, if only because - because that’s what he can do. And that’s what he’s limited to. 

(Alone, alone,  _ alone,  _ his head screams out, and Ghoul clamps down on the sudden waves of dizziness that emanate out from his chest, shaking his bones, like the marrow keeps getting infused with his emotion of choice.) 

“So says you,” the thing says, laughing - a laugh that sounds like metal grating against metal, broken and shredded; its throat doesn’t even move. “And you’re a dead man walking, aren’t you?” 

“What’s it to you?” 

“You’re the one who started it. You’re the Detonator, I hear the bloody one say. Detonator, fall out. I suppose it’s somewhat right.” 

“Let me  _ out.”  _

“Now, why would I ever do that?” The thing raises a brow, though there’s something  _ wrong  _ with the motion, like it doesn’t quite understand the muscles and bone structures it's supposed to follow. Smoke pours out of its mouth as it speaks, but Ghoul’s long since past that. 

“Because I need to be out there with them,” Ghoul snaps and only realizes after he’s said it that arguing in a mirror version of reality isn’t a good idea, a chill creeping underneath his fingertips again. “They’re - they’re  _ my  _ crew. You belong in this  _ Shop  _ and you know it.” 

“Mad Gear didn’t think so. Doesn’t, I should say. Say, say, you remember them, don’t you?” 

_ I remember them screaming for weeks. I remember it took them three months to realize that Morphine and Skyline were gone. I remember they didn’t want anything to do with me because of what they’d fucking seen in here.  _

Ghoul doesn’t say any of that out loud, but maybe the thing is in his head, too, because it laughs, again, and the sound is even worse than last time. 

“You  _ do  _ remember them! A fine specimen, really, no bleeding at all. I’m tempted to bring you back, Fun Ghoul, because the sun’s coming up. Do you know what happens when the sun comes up, when you’re flung back to your own body lying in the sunlight?” 

He’s certain he was in the dark when he fell asleep. He wouldn’t put it past the thing to move him, though. “No. I don’t.” 

“You burn,” it grins, and oh, there’s something there beyond cruelty. Pleasure, perhaps? 

Ghoul doesn’t know. He doesn’t  _ want  _ to know - he doesn’t  _ need  _ to know. Just needs to get back to the Girl. Just needs to get back to living his life and making sure no one goes to the MIrror Shop ever again, that the strip mall is never in their line of sight. 

That the highway could stretch on forever and ever without any interruption. Without an empty tank of gas or clawed opinions or mirrors.  _ Mirrors.  _

Ghoul fucking hates mirrors. He’s never looking in one again, not in Z-6, not even if it crashes the fucking Trans Am. The Trans Am… 

“Poison,” Ghoul says loudly, as though Poison can hear beyond the veneer of dimensions between them; or maybe there really is nothing between them, just a mirror, just a mirror and a nightmare and the smokey, melted flesh of something even divinity can’t hold down. “What did you do to Poison?” 

“You keep trying to bargain, but you’re a gambler without any chips,” it tsks, looking  _ bored,  _ but the boredom looks all wrong on Ghoul’s own face.

“I’m not bargaining.” But he is, and something in Ghoul’s gut twists violently to the side when he realizes that. 

He doesn’t  _ care  _ about the thing in the mirror. It’s just like anything else - once you get used to it, the fear goes away. The fear goes  _ away  _ and he has a feeling that the  _ thing  _ doesn’t like that, but he can’t force himself to be afraid, can he? 

What Ghoul  _ cares  _ about, on the other hand, is getting back to his fucking crew, and he’s cried so much that there’s nothing left  _ for  _ him to cry, and the cold violently pierces the skin of his lower back, but he grits his teeth and deals with it. 

“You’re trying to,” the thing says, a grin so razor-sharp that Ghoul’s shocked it isn’t piercing the skin. But that  _ isn’t  _ skin and that’s something he can’t quite remember, even with it hanging down in rivulets, broken off the mangled version of a face. “What makes you tick, Fun Ghoul?” 

Ghoul’s silent. 

There’s something about the question, he knows, that’s designed to make him uncomfortable. That’s what the thing wants, because they’re in the mirror version of reality and Ghoul has no power, here. He doesn’t even have his blaster. 

The thing wants something from him, and he doesn’t want to know what happens when it gets it. 

“A bombmaker without a home,” it says, humming, low and under its breath but it’s rapidly gaining volume, to the point where Ghoul’s wincing from the change. “A killjoy without a cause. A boy without a mother. Where do you have to go to get a broken record like you?” 

Once again, Ghoul keeps his mouth shut, his jaw tight, but he’s opening his mouth, and it isn’t of his own accord. 

The things he says, though, those are things he’s thought for years and never voiced and never  _ wants  _ to voice and he’s - he’s fighting it but it’s needles in his skin, climbing from his throat to his heart and his vocal cords  _ burn  _ as syllables fall from his lips. “A broken record that still plays. Let me out of this  _ mirror.”  _

“On one condition.” 

Ghoul grimaces, but he doesn’t let any more emotion escape than that - he doesn’t know if it helps, if it can help, because this thing is in his  _ head  _ and there’s nothing he can do about that other than  _ take it.  _

That’s the part that hurts the most. 

(Or maybe it’s the part of him that knows that it won’t matter in the end.) 

The thing continues without acknowledging him, looking  _ through  _ him rather than at him. Maybe the thing is seeing its true form, in the mirror, with the red eyes and the red halo engulfing it, the eternity for the damned. “You must leave something behind. Something you haven’t paid for yet, something you’ve stolen.” 

_ Something you haven’t paid for yet, something you’ve stolen.  _

Really, Ghoul should be thinking of the physical things - the dog tags he stole off his mother’s corpse, the grief he’s never processed, the switchblade that usually lies by his side - stolen off Morphine. She’d been pissed about that. He never got the chance to give it back. 

But he’s  _ not.  _

He’s thinking about the metaphorical, the things he knows he has in the palm of his hand, the things he doesn’t deserve. The things people  _ trust  _ him with. 

He has Poison’s love. He knows that, has known that for a long time; been waiting for Poison to get the courage to say it out loud. He doesn’t deserve that. 

He has the Girl’s innocence. He knows that she still tells herself the constellation stories he told her after the first time she fired a blaster and stopped a heart. He has her innocence, keeps her young as long as he can. Tries to, anyway. 

He has Kobra’s trust. His secrets, the way Kobra tilts his jaw down when he’s pissed ‘cos he thinks he’s gonna say something bad enough to get strangled for. 

He has Jet’s guilt. He has the bitter taste of secrets in his mouth, the things that Jet won’t tell anyone other than  _ Ghoul,  _ the last can of Power Pup, and a gravestone that’s been half-inscribed for years. The guilt that comes with that, that Jet shares with him. 

Ghoul, now, Ghoul hasn’t paid for any of those. He got them and he doesn’t  _ deserve  _ them and he knows what the thing wants, he knows that it wants one of  _ those,  _ wants to shatter his crew right down the middle. 

What are the Fabulous Killjoys, after that, without their secrets? 

(What are they if not broken? If not damaged? If not glued together by the things they  _ don’t  _ tell each other rather than the things they  _ do?)  _

Ghoul swallows, the motion like moving an ocean as he does so. He doesn’t cry. 

He doesn’t have time left for tears. Tears don’t matter now, the stabbing cold in his back that isn’t quite going away no matter how much he wants it to. 

“What are you looking for?” he says instead, blood rush thrumming through his ears. Maybe it’s with the weight of a desperate man or the weight of realizations crashing down on him, but it doesn’t matter now. 

The thing has him exactly where it wants him. It wants him to choose and it wants to let the guilt destroy himself so that it can watch. Ghoul’s never been quite that cooperative, but what can he do? 

The thing hums; it’s garbled, worse than its  _ laugh,  _ worse than any other sound Ghoul’s ever heard. “Innocence. Trust. You can choose between the two.” 

_ Innocence, trust.  _

Ghoul’s starting to realize what this thing feeds on, but it’s already in his head and so he doesn’t think about that as much as he wants to; it’s just a  _ feeling,  _ the cold subsiding only for a moment. 

It’s spreading through his body, now, one vertebra at a time. 

“Choose,” it says, and that’s the end of it. 

The reflection fades from the mirror. 

Ghoul has time he doesn’t want, now, but the scene fades back into what he’s gotten used to - to the four  _ existing  _ as they are, to the mirror version of him, the  _ creature  _ talking and laughing and acting like him. 

Except he’s not acting like Ghoul, and that makes his lungs stop for a second. 

They’re more  _ relaxed  _ around the creature than they are him. They have no idea that it isn’t Ghoul, they just - they think - they think he’s in a good mood, or something. They can’t see the melted flesh and the red eyes. 

Just Ghoul. Just a version of Ghoul than the one that’s sitting behind the back of a mirror, trying to figure out which is easier to give away - the trust that he worked so hard to gain, the thing that cost him a broken arm and bared teeth and so many sleepless nights yelling and screaming until  _ belonging  _ fell over them like a blanket, or  _ innocence.  _ The innocence of a kid that’s trying not to grow up, that  _ shouldn’t have  _ to grow up. The innocence of a story and a lifetime of good memories and something you can never give back. 

Instead of mulling over it, because Ghoul knows what he’s giving up, he deepens his grimace and wastes time. The cold crawling up his spine is gone.

_ 

The thing doesn’t show up in the mirror this time. 

Instead, Ghoul knows it’s there because of the smoke that rises at his peripheral vision, at the way his body tenses as a tendril slides over the exposed skin between his scalp and his shirt collar, the soft skin of his neck that makes him shudder. 

“You’ve decided,” it says, and it sounds  _ amused.  _

Ghoul doesn’t know if he should be trying to appease it more than he already is, so he just upturns his nose and turns back to ignoring it. He has decided. 

It shouldn’t matter. He shouldn’t have to choose. But he does and that’s what’ll get him out of this mirror, and that’s what matters, and he has a home that he isn’t willing to abandon, not yet. 

“Humor me,” it says, and Ghoul turns - not by his own accord, but he can’t help the way he’s shifting, his entire torso being forced to the side so much so that he hears something  _ crack  _ before his legs follow suit, but sitting criss-cross on the ground with his hands by his side, he can’t feel it. 

Numb. The word is numb. He’s  _ numb.  _

(That would sting, but… well.) 

“What did you choose?” it says, and Ghoul’s right - it isn’t wearing his face anymore. 

It’s wearing  _ Poison’s _ .

The same eyes - save for the red - and the same tilt to its shoulders, the same ill-fitting jacket with the patchy alterations and spray paint; the only difference beyond the eyes is its  _ hair.  _

Instead of the blood-red locks that reach down to Poison’s chin, perpetually greasy and stringy, it’s  _ dripping down his shoulders.  _

“I don’t want to choose,” Ghoul says, his voice small and weak enough to his own ears, even though he didn’t want to say that,  _ doesn’t  _ want to say that, he doesn’t - 

The thing’s talons dig into his shoulder. He hadn’t even realized it had touched him in the first place. “You’ve  _ chosen.  _ Tell me what you chose before I slaughter them all with your face, Fun Ghoul.” 

There’s a weakness in there, the tell to the thing’s weakness, the one thing that can bring it down. 

Ghoul’s a coward, though, and his shoulders slouch, even with its talons still digging into his arm. 

“I…” Ghoul starts slowly, tasting the words in his mouth and finding them bitter enough to gag on. “I give up - I give up innocence. The Girl’s innocence.”

The thing simply continues grinning before the mirror world runs red around Ghoul. 

_ 

The Girl hasn’t smiled in a while. 

After the night at the mirror shop, Jet, Kobra, and Poison got a shitty, mind-splitting headache, and the Girl gripped tight to her own jacket and glared at Ghoul, and Ghoul hasn’t acted the same, either. 

His cheeks are hollow and he isn’t quite there. 

They don’t point it out. It’s rude to point out and - besides, what they can do? 

“I know,” the Girl says, a week later, staring dejectedly down at the table in front of her - she’s about to pick up Kobra’s switchblade, it looks like, maybe carve something into the old linoleum. “I know what you did.” 

“You’re a smart girl, Girlie,” Ghoul answers, with those sunken-in eyes, the ones that seem to glow when he’s angry, the ones that are  _ always  _ glowing, now. “You know it was going to happen eventually.” 

“It wasn’t yours to take.” 

She’s seven years old, and there’s no blanket for the world anymore. The bed is cold when she goes to bed at night and the constellations bore her. She’s using that stupid fucking vocabulary of hers, not quite that fidgety, not in the way kids are  _ supposed  _ to be. Trading in the crayons for the colored pencils, it seems, angrier than usual - angrier, even, than when they found her. 

She doesn’t let Ghoul tell her stories anymore. 


End file.
